PRI 2011: The DIYAutoTune ‘20,000 RPM Death Machine’

People couldn’t get enough of the Death Machine, a.k.a. the Mini-MegaBench, at PRI. Those that were paying attention got a little extra chuckle out of the warning label ;)

The display was built to grab attention of show-goers, and to illustrate the functionality of the MegaSquirt-3 EMS running a complete 8 cylinder sequential fuel injection and ignition system. We could trigger the setup using a JimStim to simulate a running engine, or spin a 36-1 trigger wheel up to speeds as high as 21,400 RPM! That turned some heads….

Here are a few pictures of our late night build sessions, followed by a video preview of the unit in action. We’ve been referring to this as the ‘20,000 RPM Death Machine’ as well as the ‘Mini MegaBench’. One of those names makes me grin a little more than the other ;).

The display worked very good at the show, despite having some minor problems consuming more power than was allotted to us, so we turned it down to about 18,000rpms, which was still plenty impressive and didn’t pop the breaker any more.